


Worth Saving

by WretchedArtifact



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, During Canon, M/M, Missing Scenes, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:55:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27183454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WretchedArtifact/pseuds/WretchedArtifact
Summary: After Cole dies, Hank is faced with the bitter reality that not a single person on the planet needs him anymore.Until Connor comes along.
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Comments: 14
Kudos: 120
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Worth Saving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatScottishShipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatScottishShipper/gifts).



They sent Hank to a shrink before they let him come back to work. It was four weeks after Cole died, when the bleeding freshness of Hank’s grief had started working its way down into his bone fibers, pain weaving permanently into the matrix of his cells. He sat on the shrink’s shabby leather couch and answered the questions on her checklist the way everyone wanted him to, barely able to hold back the contempt in his voice as he told lie after lie after lie. He wasn’t ready to go back to work, not at all—but what the fuck else was there to do, without Cole, without the ramshackle life the two of them had cobbled together out of the shards of his divorce? No one on the planet needed him anymore. His job was the only thing he had. 

The shrink said, with the quick cadence of someone repeating a phrase for the hundredth time, “Have you found yourself troubled by thoughts of suicide?”

Hank opened his mouth to say _no,_ and then, with a jolt of ugly surprise, realized it wasn’t even a lie. He didn’t want to kill himself—he didn’t have the guts. He just wanted to die. He wanted the world to sweep him aside with the same monstrous indifference it had shown towards Cole, to cut him short abruptly and without fanfare. “No,” Hank said. “I wouldn’t say I’m troubled.”

For a second, the shrink’s eyes flicked up from her checklist to look at him. She had probably heard the hint of contempt in his voice. “I don’t want to kill myself,” Hank enunciated. “I just want to go back to work and get on with my life.”

A better, more expensive shrink might’ve probed a little deeper into that. But Hank wasn’t there to have his mental state analyzed; he was there to have his return paperwork rubber-stamped. She knew it as well as he did. 

Two days later, Hank came back to work with a clean bill of mental health and the faint smell of whiskey on his breath. He was surly, curt, and two hours late. Jeffrey could’ve busted him for it, but he didn’t. Jeffrey had a heart; he’d make allowances for a grieving man. 

Jeffrey didn’t know how many allowances he would have to make over the next three years. 

...

The universe didn’t sweep Hank aside. Hank did everything he could to try and force its hand: drinking himself into a stupor every night, stumbling across streets without looking, leaving his revolver out on the kitchen table in case a moment of courage finally presented itself. None of it worked. No one on the planet needed him anymore, but somehow he kept _existing_ , and it filled him with perpetual rage: at how easily some lights could be snuffed out, and how tenaciously his sputtering, guttering candle of a life was holding on. 

And then—

Connor. The plastic prick. The bane of Hank’s recent existence. Sitting ramrod-straight in the passenger seat of Hank’s car, like he had a stick up his ass. CyberLife spent all that money trying to make him seem human and they couldn’t even program him to slouch. “Lieutenant,” Connor said, his brow faintly furrowed. “There’s something I’ve been wondering since we started working together. Is there a reason you always choose to go first when we enter a dangerous situation?”

Hank’s brow furrowed too, at hearing such a stupid question. “Yeah,” he said. “‘Cuz I’m the one with the gun.”

“But you’re more susceptible to injury than I am,” Connor said. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to let me go first, to take the brunt of any potential violence we might encounter?”

Hank balked at that, instinctively. Then he felt a rush of uncomfortable confusion. Why the fuck was he balking? That’s what androids were for, right? To fight humans’ wars for them, and do the shitty grunt work no one else wanted to do. If Connor wanted to charge into a crime scene first and take a hail of bullets for Hank, why the fuck should he stop him?

But Hank’s gut didn’t like the sound of that. In Hank’s line of work, he’d learned to trust his gut instincts, and right now all of those instincts were rebelling against the idea of sending Connor in first to be Hank’s overpriced plastic shield. Those assholes at CyberLife had given Connor basically zero self-preservation instincts; he’d chased a deviant on top of a _moving fucking train_ a few hours ago. And he would’ve run straight into highway traffic the other day if Hank hadn’t made him stop. Even if he _was_ just an android, it made Hank’s stomach twist to picture Connor going under the wheels of a truck, his mangled body spitting out the other end in a spray of cracked plastic and blue. 

And besides, Hank had spent the last three years waiting for the universe to take him out. He was ready for it. He was _hungry_ for it. Why would he let anyone, even an android, step in and take the killing blow? 

But there was no way Hank was about to say any of that to Connor. He fumbled around for a different answer. “Look, you’re a rookie, okay?” Hank said. “You’ve got a lot of book smarts, but you’ve got next to no experience in the field. If I let you run into a dangerous situation and start making rookie mistakes, you could get us both killed.”

The furrow on Connor’s brow deepened. “It’s true that I have limited real-world experience,” he said. “But I’ve undergone thousands of detailed field work simulations, and my scenario assessment algorithms have 96% accuracy in most—”

“Jesus Christ,” Hank groaned. “No simulation is gonna prepare you for just how batshit fucking crazy people can be. I don’t care how detailed they were, it’s not the same.”

Connor gave him a curious look. “But we’re not going after _people_ , Lieutenant. We’re going after deviants.”

And—he was right, technically, but for some reason Hank felt irritated when he said it. “You told me that deviants are irrational and unpredictable,” Hank said. “So what’s the fucking difference, at that point? We keep doing things my way, Connor. End of story.”

Connor turned back to face the windshield of the car. Hank caught a flicker out of the corner of his eye: the cool blue of Connor’s LED, reflected in the passenger side window, had dimmed to an almost imperceptible yellow. 

“Of course, Lieutenant,” Connor said. 

...

Hank didn’t feel like going to the bar the next night. He stayed home with a bottle of whiskey and his revolver, loaded with a single bullet. For an hour he drank straight from the bottle and toyed with the gun idly, hefting it up, spinning the chambers. He never had the guts to put the muzzle against his head when he was sober, but drinking made him a little more reckless, and twice he lifted the gun up, touched the muzzle to his skull, and laid his finger on the trigger. 

He didn’t pull. Not drunk enough yet. He kept taking swigs until the bottle was almost empty, and when he finally picked up the gun again, he felt a rush of certainty: this time he’d be able to do it. He _would._ He lifted the gun to his head. 

Then his balance slurred sideways and he fell right out of his goddamn chair. He heard the gun clatter to the floor, heard the heavy _clunk_ of the whiskey bottle against the kitchen linoleum. His head made a _clunk_ on the linoleum, too, and he shut his eyes and groaned from the pain. The linoleum was cold and hard against his shitty middle-aged back, and when he tried to move, he couldn’t flip over, like a turtle stuck upside-down on its shell. 

Then—

He was sitting up. Hands were on him. An irritating blue glow was shining in his peripheral vision. Oh, Jesus, it was that _fucking android_. Connor had Hank’s arm pulled over his shoulder, one of his hands firm against Hank’s back, his stupid pretty-boy face so close to Hank’s that Hank could see each individual synthetic eyelash. Like it wasn’t enough that he followed Hank into work, and into bars, and into cars and crimes scenes. Now he was in Hank’s _house_. “Get the fuck outta my house!” Hank slurred, the whiskey sloshing nauseatingly in his stomach as Connor pulled him upright. He felt sick, and enraged, and useless. 

Connor said, perfectly matter-of-fact: “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but I need you.”

He _needed_ him. It was so goddamn insulting that Hank would’ve taken a swing at him, if he’d had the coordination. No one on the planet _needed_ Hank. They tolerated him, and made allowances for him, and stepped away when his cesspool of a life got too close to dirtying their shoes. Connor sure as fuck didn’t need Hank: he just needed Hank’s access and credentials. Any asshole down at the station could’ve helped him. Hank was just the unlucky son of a bitch who’d gotten stuck with the job. 

But the fucker was _strong,_ and as Connor hauled Hank out of the kitchen, Hank got his first involuntary taste of what an android’s body felt like, up close and personal. It was weird. Connor had too much strength for that narrow build and those noodly arms, and the way his flesh covered his frame felt wrong. It had warmth and pliability, but it was too uniform. Too thin.

Then Hank was no longer in Connor’s grasp, but wedged in his own goddamn bathtub, sitting under a deluge of ice-cold November water. And in that moment Hank still felt sick, and enraged, and useless, but the fog in his head quickly started to shrink. Not just the fog from the whiskey, but the fog from before that: the dull, sickly heaviness that had directed his fumbling hands to load that bullet into his revolver. 

Christ, his life was a mess. Killing himself by inches. Passing out every night. Being so shitty at his job that Jeffrey had stuck him with the worst beat imaginable: one where he found himself chased across heaven and hell by an android who refused to take _fuck off_ for an answer. 

The deluge of water stopped. Hank looked up through his wet hair at Connor. Stared at that youthful, designed-by-committee face, with that obnoxious tuft of hair dipping loose over his forehead. Twenty pricks with art degrees had probably spent a year putting that non-threatening look together, and here in his momentary state of clarity, Hank hated how well it was working on him. Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, that face would’ve turned Hank’s head. 

He said, feelingly, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

...

Hank had drunk enough that night to kill the liver of a lesser man. Even so, on his way back from the Eden Club, he stopped at a liquor store and bought another bottle. He knew it was a bad idea, but he’d just been beaten the fuck up, and booze would do more for the pain than Advil would. Connor stayed in the car, ramrod-straight as usual in the passenger seat, that stick still firmly wedged up his ass. When Hank came back with his bottle, he could see Connor’s LED glowing through the windshield, a churning butter-yellow. 

Connor had been unusually quiet for the last half-hour. Normally he never shut up, peppering Hank with endless questions, but he’d said all of two sentences since they pulled out onto the road. “I’ll send my report to CyberLife now,” he said first, and went into a state of creepy flatness as he transmitted all his data. Then, when he came back online, he looked over at Hank and said—unprompted—“The deviants only would’ve been useful to us if we could’ve captured them alive.”

But he didn’t sound matter-of-fact or confident, the way he normally did. He sounded like he was trying to justify it to himself. 

He sounded _uncertain._

It really was the damnedest thing. Hank had watched Connor get his ass handed to him by two deviants, had seen him grab Hank’s abandoned gun from the ground, and right away Hank winced, waiting for the deafening _crack_ of the gunshot. But it never came. Connor had a point-blank shot, and he hadn’t taken it. If he’d been human, Hank would’ve said he froze up—Hank had seen it happen to plenty of guys in the field—but Connor wasn’t human. He was the most fuck-off expensive prototype that CyberLife had ever created, and while Hank didn’t have any fancy algorithms in _his_ brain, even a dumb meatbag like him knew that shooting one of those girls would’ve made the other one a lot easier to catch.

God, those girls. Clutching each other’s hands like that, with pain and anguish all over their faces. And that warehouse, those rows and rows of androids, used up until they broke. It made Hank’s stomach sick. If they were just machines, then where the fuck was the rest of it coming from: the pain, the love, the fear? Connor said before that it was just faulty programming, or a virus. They weren’t _supposed_ to feel those things. 

But they _were_ feeling them. Hank had seen the evidence with his own two eyes. 

It was almost too much for his tired brain to take. Hank had spent years hating and resenting androids—those job-stealing machines play-acting as people, churned out by a corporation that didn’t care how much their presence was warping human society. For years, Hank had been convinced that every display of android emotion was just a cheap trick of their programming, a way to ingratiate themselves to their owners. 

But the look on those girls’ faces—that was something different. 

The look on Connor’s face, right now: the uncertain bunching of his forehead, the uneasy set of his mouth. 

That was something different. 

...

They always said there were no atheists in foxholes. After the car accident, while Cole was under the knife of an android surgeon, Hank had begged a God he barely believed in to intervene and save his son’s life. And God had ignored him, or said no, or just kept not-existing, and the fury Hank felt afterward had an undercurrent of humiliation in it. He swore to himself that no matter how bad things ever got, he’d never humble himself like that again. 

And then—

Connor. 

A gunshot hole in one shoulder, his fussy CyberLife suit stained blue. Hank had hauled him out of active gunfire, dragged him behind cover, and the reckless asshole _left it_ , leaping out in a suicidal bid to catch this latest deviant alive. Hank heard the scrambling of feet in the snow, rapid-fire gunshots, and then a silence so sickeningly final that Hank’s heart lurched in his chest. 

And Hank did it again—stupidly, involuntarily. He cast a ragged plea out to whatever higher power might be listening.

_Please don’t let me go out there and find him dead._

He stepped out from behind his cover and looked across the snowy rooftop of the Stratford Tower. There wasn’t any sign of the blond-haired deviant; there was just Connor, standing there, staring down at the ground. Alive.

It cracked something open in Hank’s chest. For three years Hank hadn’t let himself care about anyone except his dog, because he couldn’t stand the thought of living through it twice: the heartbreak and grief of losing someone. And it had been _easy_ not to care about anyone, all those years. He stayed at home, drank himself stupid, and rudely shut down anyone who tried to reach out with a helping hand. 

But Connor hadn’t let Hank shut him out. Connor followed Hank everywhere: into bars, and cars, and crime scenes. He followed him into Hank’s fucking _house_ , violating every social norm and law against trespassing, just to pick Hank up off the floor. He peppered Hank with questions, pulled Hank out of danger, and watched Hank with an expression of interest and curiosity that made Hank’s heart soften a little, every time he saw it. 

The fucker made Hank _care_ about him. 

And then he had charged straight into gunfire, heedless of his own safety. Hank knew what it felt like to be careless with his own life, but seeing Connor do it made him so aggravated he wanted to shout. 

_That_ was why he pushed Connor behind him when they were about to walk into trouble. All this time Hank had thought it was his own fatalism that made him do it, his wish for an unfeeling universe to finally sweep his worthless life away. But no. That wasn’t it. 

Hank wasn’t being careless with his own life; he was being cautious with Connor’s. No one on the planet seemed concerned with making sure Connor lived to see the next day, and Hank knew, deep down in his gut, that it was wrong. Connor was somebody worth saving. 

Connor was _somebody,_ and that made him worth saving. 

...

Connor needed Hank.

Hank realized it out there in the snow, as that prick from the FBI stomped around, screaming at everyone for doing such a piss-poor job of securing the roof. Connor had a fucking hole in his shoulder, his fingertips twitching sharply every few seconds in a way that looked out of his control, and no one was saying a word about it. If he’d been human, there would’ve been a procedure to follow: medics, a stretcher, an ambulance ride to the hospital. But he wasn’t, and so everyone was ignoring him. 

Hank put his hand on Connor’s back and started guiding him firmly toward the roof’s exit. “Hey!” Perkins shouted, cutting himself off mid-tirade. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

God, Hank would love to punch that asshole in the face. “I’m taking him back to CyberLife,” Hank said. “I don’t know if you noticed, but he’s been shot.”

“If it can walk and talk, then it can wait until we get its statement about what happened.”

Hank opened the door back into the tower and pushed Connor through. “He’s an android,” Hank said. “He can email it to you in ten seconds with his eyes closed.”

Nobody chased after them as they disappeared inside, and Hank pictured the way Perkins was probably fuming and liked the mental image a lot. Connor looked back at Hank questioningly. “It’s not an urgent repair, Lieutenant,” he said. “I can stay and give my statement.”

“When you get shot, you get the rest of the day off,” Hank said. “That’s the rule. And anyway, I don’t like the look of your hand.”

Connor looked down at the faint, mechanical twitch of his fingertips. “It’s just a sensor malfunction. Nothing serious.”

“Nothing serious?” Hank said. He guided Connor into the elevator at the end of the hall. “How’re you going to bug me with your stupid coin tricks with your fingers like that?”

For a second, Connor’s brow pulled inward slightly, processing. Then a small smile appeared on his lips. “I would’ve thought you’d be happy about that, Lieutenant.”

The elevator doors slid shut. Hank turned to face Connor, and without thinking he reached out and cupped his hand around the back of Connor’s neck. Connor’s eyebrows lifted, his LED spinning yellow. 

“Don’t do that again,” Hank said, as simply and seriously as he could manage. “Okay? Don't risk your life for one clue in a case. That’s not an order—that’s me asking you. I’ve already seen a lot of shit in my life, and I don’t want to see my partner get killed right in front of me.”

Connor’s eyes dipped down and then up again, taking in Hank’s expression. The yellow of his LED spun red for a moment. “I’m sorry that I alarmed you,” Connor said. “That wasn’t my intent.”

It wasn’t the reply Hank was looking for. He waited, keeping his hand on Connor’s neck.

Connor's LED spun red again. He said, slowly: “In the future, I will...more carefully assess my options, to better ensure both of our safety. Whenever possible.”

Spoken like a guy who probably had a degree in contract law downloaded into his brain, but Hank knew it was the best he could ask for. He squeezed the back of Connor’s neck briefly and let go. “Thank you,” he said.

Connor turned to face the elevator door. His LED had retreated to yellow. And then, for a brief second, Hank saw him do something he’d never done before. Connor looked over at Hank from the very corner of his eye—saw Hank was still looking at him—and quickly looked away, flustered. 

It was very human of him. 

And _that's_ why Connor needed Hank: because Connor didn't seem to realize just how much he'd changed since Hank met him. He was coming into his own mind, growing past his original programming, and yet he was still throwing himself in front of bullets for the sake of his mission. He was still acting like his life didn't matter. He didn't seem to realize he had hooked his finger into Hank's heartstrings, and that if he threw himself off a cliff, he'd rip out Hank's heart and take it with him.

So there was really only one thing Hank could do. 

Hank would care about Connor's life for him. Starting with that hole in his shoulder. 

...

**Epilogue **

The first time Hank hugged Connor, out there in the empty, post-revolution streets of Detroit, it was hard enough to make Connor’s ribs crack. Fortunately Connor didn’t have ribs, so he survived it. Hank felt Connor’s arms move cautiously around him, and then compress down into a light, almost tentative squeeze. “That’s really all you’ve got?” Hank asked. 

“I’ve never hugged anyone before,” Connor said. “I didn’t want to get the pressure wrong.”

“It’s trial and error,” Hank said. “You just squeeze until the other person yelps, and then you dial it back a little. Easy.”

Connor squeezed him again, tighter. His body, pressed up against Hank’s, briefly registered in Hank’s mind as _wrong_ again: there was no bunching of muscles, the flesh uniform and thin. 

But it wasn’t wrong. It was just Connor. 

“This has been a very big adjustment,” Connor said. The side of his face was pressed against Hank’s; Hank could feel his jaw moving as he spoke. “I’m more used to order and structure. I’m afraid I don’t make a very good revolutionary.”

“Yeah,” Hank said. “I guess it’s hard to be flexible with that stick permanently wedged up your ass.”

It earned him a low, almost pained-sounding laugh from Connor. “I don’t know what to do,” Connor said, and in the bare simplicity of those words, Hank heard human emotion: worry, fragility, and fear. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Hank said. He shifted one hand, cradling the back of Connor’s neck. “One step at a time, right?”

“I know this isn’t your fight, Lieutenant,” Connor said. “You didn’t ask for any of this.”

“No, I didn’t,” Hank said. “But I was doing fuck-all with my life, anyway. If you need me, I’m yours.”

Connor was silent for a moment. Then his arms squeezed just a little bit tighter. Not quite within yelping pressure, but getting close. 

“I need you,” Connor said. 

Hank believed it. And if his stupid, sputtering, guttering candle of a life could light the way for Connor, then at least it would give some meaning to the last three terrible years.

“You’ve got me, then,” Hank said. He tipped his head and kissed the thin, warm, strange flesh of Connor's cheek. “Anything you want. For as long as you need.”

...


End file.
